Admiral Essen frigate to be handed to Russian Navy by end of 2015

KALININGRAD, November 7. /TASS/. Second ship in the new family of Russian frigates, the Admiral Essen, will be handed to the Navy at the end of 2015, Pyotr Vassilyev, the designer-in-chief of Project 11356 ships told TASS at a gala ceremony where the frigate was floated.

In the meantime, spokespeople for the ‘Yantar’ Baltic Shipbuilding Yard, which is building ships of the new family, said the Admiral Grigorovich, the flagship of project, will be floated and handed over to the Navy by the end of next spring.

Under an agreement with the Russian Defence Ministry, Yantar is to complete construction of six ships under Project 11356 in 2017. They were designed by the Northern Design and Development Bureau.

A total of five frigates - the Admiral Grigorovich, the Admiral Essen, the Admiral Makarov, the Admiral Butakov, and the Admiral Istomin - have been laid down. The Admiral Kornilov frigate is next in line but no specifications of the time of its construction have been made so far.

Project 11356 frigates have a capability for combat actions on high seas against surface ships and submarines and for repelling enemy airstrikes both autonomously and as escort ships within naval detachments.